It is just over a week until the American people go to the polls for one of the most potentially consequential elections in the nation’s history. The one point of near consensus in the US polity is that democracy is under threat — 76% of respondents to a New York Times/Siena College poll agreed to that proposition, though one can only guess at the variety of causes for their anxiety.
Wash-No
The fallout continues from the decision of The Washington Post to not endorse a candidate for the 2024 election. On Friday publisher and CEO William Lewis wrote that the Post would “not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election”.
We recognise that this will be read in a range of ways, including as a tacit endorsement of one candidate, or as a condemnation of another, or as an abdication of responsibility. That is inevitable. We don’t see it that way. We see it as consistent with the values the Post has always stood for and what we hope for in a leader: character and courage in service to the American ethic, veneration for the rule of law, and respect for human freedom in all its aspects. We also see it as a statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds on this, the most consequential of American decisions — whom to vote for as the next president.
WashPo editor-at-large Robert Kagan confirmed that he had resigned from the paper, while The Washington Post Guild, which represents the unionised staff at the newspaper, said it was “deeply concerned” at the move: “We are already seeing cancellations from once-loyal readers.”
But despite what the Post told its readers and its reporters, it’s widely understood the decision was made not at an editorial level, but by WashPo owner, tech billionaire Jeff Bezos. WashPo‘s editorial board had drafted an endorsement of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris earlier this month and was reportedly blindsided by the decision to nix it.
“If you don’t have the balls to own a newspaper, don’t,” one board member told Semafor. As such, it’s been suggested in a few quarters that boycotting the paper would be counterproductive, and that the real target ought to be the Amazon Prime subscriptions that — via exploitative labour practices and brutal crushing of competition — have made Bezos his billions.
Despair at Madison Square
The Trump campaign has kicked off its last full week at New York’s Madison Square Gardens. The opening act was Trump supporting podcaster Tony Hinchcliffe, who, leaning heavily into the campaign’s increasingly hateful rhetoric towards Latino voters, spouted bon mots such as the following: “There’s a lot going on. I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico”.
Apropos of nothing, we’re sure, Google searches for information about the Nazi rally held at the same venue in 1939 spiked as the Trump rally went on.
The final countdown
Meanwhile, Harris — who shared a stage with Beyonce and Willie Nelson in Houston, Texas on Friday — has announced the location of what’s being called her closing argument to the American people. On Tuesday, a week before the vote, she will address supporters from a stage at The Ellipse in Washington DC. Also known as President’s Park South and just over a kilometre from the White House, it housed Union troops in the Civil War and emergency barracks in the Second World War and is the site of the annual lighting of the National Christmas Tree. It’s also where, on January 6, 2021, Donald Trump held his “Save America” rally.
Fueled by Trump’s lies that the election had been stolen from him (“you’ll never take back our country with weakness,” he told them. “You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated”), attendees left the speech, marched south and attacked and occupied the Capitol building.
Twenty thousand people are reportedly expected to attend Harris’ speech.
